Caretaker government has appointed M Riaz Khan as new Managing Director (MD) of the country's largest oil and gas explorer Oil and Gas Development Company Limited (OGDCL). An official of Petroleum Ministry said that Executive Director (ED) OGDCL Riaz Ahmad Khan was given the acting charge of the company following removal of Masood Siddiqui over different corruption charges and irregularity in his appointment.
Caretaker Prime Minister Mir Hazar Khan Khoso had approved the summary of removal of Masood Siddiqui's moved by Petroleum Ministry on Monday. Khan is a Petroleum Engineer with over 30 years diversified experience in various disciplines of petroleum engineering including production, operations and management, production forecasts, production optimisation, surface facilities, oil and gas field development and gas conditioning/processing.
According to charge sheet against former chief OGDCL Masood Siddiqui, a copy of which is available with this correspondent, Petroleum Ministry said that it had come to its knowledge that Masood Siddiqui had been managing the affairs of OGDCL in a partisan, selective, arbitrary and non-transparent manner. He arbitrarily hired a bullet proof vehicle in Karachi at a hefty rent of Rs 1.20 million per month. The Prime Minister had been informed that in another case an ongoing inquiry into embezzlement of High Speed Diesel (HSD) pilferage worth Rs 320 million at Tando Alam logistics had established involvement of Niaz Ahmad Arbab Operating Manager (Logistics) whop was suspended from service in January 2012.
The two inquiry committees comprised senior level officials of OGDCL. Siddiqui, however, on the recommendation of his officer Colonel Javaid Iqbal (Retd) quashed the earlier findings of the two senior officers and instead outsourced the probe to a private security company at Rs 2.2 million.
This private company exonerated all the accused earlier found involved by two in house inquiry committees of OGDCL. Thereafter, Siddiqui reinstated the accused in August 2012 in blatant disregard to rules and policy since no policy allowed the MD to outsource the investigation of a serious matter involving millions of rupees. The Prime Minister was further informed that Masood Siddiqui had taken on the pay roll around 3,000 third party workers who were hired through third party contractors who would automatically become regular employees after a couple of years.